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Topic: random stuff (Read 19692 times)

shots from my new movie, This Close or This Far. It's a boxing love story that's about 10 minutes long. Just finished shooting yesterday. shot it on ex-1. Xerxes worked on this as an AD. he was a cupcake. it was the biggest crew I'd directed. the movie stars the girl who cut my hair and Baba Zumbi from the hip hop group Zion I. I tried to combine my two favorite montage traditions - boxing and romance - and tried to make a film that was a montage sequence.

the planning was one of the most stressful things I've done, but the actual filmming was very very relaxed. the crew worked fast, there was no drama, everyone was a pro, I was just behind the monitor, making requests, and they'd go out and do it. the performance sometimes weren't as deft as I'd required, but we made sure they were at least good. the schedule didn't allow me to be an asshole. we had to do 16 pages in two days. some of the sound stuff came back messed up, I'm gonna try to see how the editing process goes. I think two years of fight scenes made dialogue scenes and boxing pretty easy. now lets see if I can get into any festival.

Very cool, I like your predilection towards natural light. I think natural light is the way to go, and that's how you shoot 16 pages in two days. Looks like good casting too. That one shot in the gym/dojo looks a little dark, but I'm eager to see how it turns out. When do you think you'll have it edited?

so far it costs about 1200, gonna see how much free sound services I can get. probably will have to throw down more money, the ADR isn't gonna be too fun for the girl since she's never done it before. the guy's a pro and an accomplished hip hop artist so I'm not too worried about him dubbing himself in. most of the budget went into the equipment and food. I'd say 3/5 equipment, 1/5 food and 1/5 crew. I spent way too much on food and ended up with a lot of leftovers. I was saved by my panic-stricken phone calls to all my friends who've AD'd and PA'd and have a car. Xerxes was a big help, amongst many others, so obviously not every shoot in the future is gonna have 5 great AD's, but I'll take them when I can.

gamblour - the gym was actually rigged with kino divas everywhere. the one shot was supposed to balance for the outside - obviously now I wish I hadn't asked the DP to tone it down so dark. but yeah, the crew really knew what they were doing, and they had lights I'd only read about in american cinematographer. a lot of exteriors had little brick lights and other LED lights from off-frame.

I just hope the script stays together. sometimes jumps that you make in a script may prove too jarring in cinema, I'm worried about that right now.

That was dope. One-man crew? You could have fooled me. The fighting was very well done. As realistic and intense to me than anything you find in good actions movies today. Loved the sound/camerawork too. Nice work!

Were you one of the guys in the fight scene? Thought I might have seen your face pop up at one point..

no, I stay behind the scenes with my stunt crew. The light just looked like that we didn't use anything extra, I did props and skateboard dollying but mostly I was choreographing the stuff with the guys.